The Oxford readers..Eyewitness DuBois: Poles Also Greatly Suffered in WWII—Not Only the Jews

jan peczkis|Tuesday, January 16, 2018

W. E. B. DuBois has been quoted, as per his visit to Poland immediately after WWII, about the Nazi German-destroyed Warsaw Ghetto. However, what is seldom told is his appreciation of Polish suffering, as manifested by the complete destruction of Warsaw at the hands of the Germans. The following is a direct quote from DuBois (from page 471 of this anthology):

Then finally three years ago I was in Warsaw. I have seen something of human upheaval in this world: the scream and shots of a race riot in Atlanta; the marching of the Ku Klux Klan; the threat of courts and police, the neglect and destruction of human habitation; but nothing in my wildest imagination was equal to what I saw in Warsaw in 1949. I would have said before seeing it that it was impossible for a civilized nation with deep religious convictions and outstanding religious institutions; with literature and art; to treat fellow human beings as Warsaw had been treated. There had been complete planned and utter destruction. Some streets were so obliterated that only by using photographs of the past could they tell where the street was. And no one mentioned the total of the dead, the sum of destruction, the story of crippled and insane, the widows and orphans. The astonishing thing, of course, was the way that in the midst of all these memories of war and destruction, the people were rebuilding the city with an enthusiasm that was simply unbelievable. A city and a nation was literally rising from the dead.
Jan Peczkis18 days ago
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For more on the systematic German destruction of Warsaw following the fall of the Soviet-betrayed Warsaw Uprising, see: